THE WAY WE WERE

Sept. 1971 THE WAY WE WERE

The editors at AMA News were impressed with OAS when it debuted; “A picture surreal,” they wrote, “larger and more detailed than life.”

On Any Sunday, Bruce Brown Productions’ feature-length film on motorcycling in the United States, finally has entered the theaters. Motorcycle enthusiasts and fans of the American Motorcycle Association national championship circuit have known of its coming for nearly two years. Throughout the 1970 season they watched Brown’s crew shoot miles of film at nearly every major race on the circuit, and now that the picture has arrived, motorcyclists are finding it very hard to comment intelligently.

On Any Sunday possesses such impact, those who know motorcycling well are apt to find themselves disarmed and speechless, emerging from the theater repeating superlatives such as “great” and “fantastic” in an effort to verbalize their awe.

Their reaction is charged by a picture surreal, larger and more detailed than life. They are responding to sights they have never seen before, nor will ever see with the naked eye. Large portions of On Any Sunday are in extreme slow motion, revealing mechanical and physical abuse that spectators have not seen when it was telescoped in time into the frantic action of mile and half-mile racing. From the end of the straight to the apex of the first turn, motorcycles brutally bottom their shocks dozens of times, and the hard thighs and biceps of the riders shake like flab under the force of each impact. Yet in split-second reality we will never see it happen.

And those who have caught fleeting moments of the grace of road racing have never seen it the way Brown sees it. From behind his camera the tightest turn of Laconia is a timeless ballet, with heat waves from the pavement softening the scene and turning the streamlined machines into softly vibrating lighterthan-air machines, field flowers providing the setting on the stage.

For the uninitiated, On Any Sunday is an overture, an introduction to all aspects of the growing, exciting sport of motorcycling. Practically no aspect

of its endless variety goes untouched by Brown. From one extreme in agony to the other he ranges from the bone-freezing spectacle of ice racing in Quebec City to the choking hell of desert racing in the Mojave. And in between he touches upon all the happy scenes that lend the sport versatility, from the smiling fantasy of observed trials to the hilarity of amateur hill climbing.

Thousands of these viewers will be turned on by On Any Sunday, introduced to the world of motorcycling in a way that will make it impossible for their fear or distrust to remain. Many will continue from the theater to their first Sunday outing, to witness the sport firsthand. And even if they don’t, they will come away from the film with a different regard for motorcycling that you will see in their faces the next time they see you astride your road machine, or towing your dirt bikes.

Like The Endless Summer, the surfing film that made Bruce Brown a landmark in the history of film making, On Any Sunday is about as far away from Hollywood as you can get. It is filmed as it happens, where it happens, and narrated by Brown in a casual way that serves to fill in where the pictures leave questions.

And in places the result is more spectacular and sensational than Hollywood could ever contrive with a ton of tinsel and an endless budget. For example, skill with cameras, careful editing and a minimum of special effects turns Jim Rice’s 1970 Sacramento Mile crash into the kind of spectacle of violence that repeated car smashing failed to do for Le Mans. The camera seems almost to be planted as Jim blasts toward it through the fence and hay bales just feet away, then stops in a blinding blur of red BSA and yellow straw. Then a split second later, in the same exploding action, his girl screams to her feet, her blonde hair whirling like the straw, then too is transfixed by the camera in a moment of frozen terror. The footage must be studied, demanding repeated viewing as do many portions of the film.

The only vestige of a plot is the progression of Mert Lawwill through the year of his Grand National Championship, one of the most disheartening and unlucky seasons of his career. What emerges is not a sob story, but a sympathetic tale of one professional racer’s iron character and infinite patience.

A similar subplot follows the exploits of desert racer Malcolm Smith, only by way of counterpoint to Mert this story is a happy tale. Smith’s amateur racing seems never to be darkened by the misfortunes that plague Mert the professional. Smith smiles his way from one victory to another.

And in between is the motorcyclist everyman, played, incredibly enough, by Steve McQueen. He is the parttime competitor who works with the determination of a Lawwill, but comes up smiling like Smith, because he has nothing to lose.

Again taunting Hollywood with his hand-held camera, Brown produces a McQueen that you have never seen before. The plaster statue of Le Mans or The Thomas Crown Affair is replaced by a smiling, mud-dodging, easy riding McQueen who serves well to represent the average motorcyclist. This alone renders On Any Sunday fascinating. It reveals the McQueen that columnists keep telling us is there, but who has not stepped out from behind the mask before this film.

The final scenes are some of the finest. After Brown takes the viewer through a draining hour and a half of laughter and seat-gripping action, he lets him down easy. Lawwill, Smith and McQueen, the three very different types of motorcyclists who compete on any Sunday, come together in a final act about the joy of motorcycling.

Brown puts them on dirt bikes and turns them loose on a sandy beach. They slide, turn, do wheelies and jump the dunes. The long lens moves in from far away to capture the tickled pleasure on Mert’s face that was hidden on the championship trail. Smith cavorts with casual abandon and McQueen vacillates between laughter and tight-lipped determination as he strains to stay with the superior riders.

Brown reveals the truth of his attraction to motorcycling in these final moments. The last scenes are not about motorcycles, but rather about the people who ride them. The kindness Brown feels toward the Smiths and the Lawwills of motorcycling is displayed in these smiling close-ups, and suddenly the viewer realizes what On Any Sunday has been all about.

Certainly, it has been about motorcycling, but more so it has been about the people who ride motorcycles. And as motorcyclists, you and I will be forever indebted to Bruce Brown for his vision of us and his skill in portraying it.

Go see On Any Sunday. You will find it gratifying. But if possible, take a person who does not understand motorcycling. That you will find intensely self-gratifying.